Presence, group and data management (PGM) enables IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) services and applications. By managing presence and group information, the user experience of a communications network is enhanced and IMS based services become more appealing to end-users.
Presence information typically refers to the status or availability of an end-user or resource in a network (termed a presentity). For example presence information can include a mood or location of the user, or the availability of different applications. The use of presence information allows users to manage how, when and with whom to communicate. Group and Data Management refers to the users' ability to handle network based groups and data such as contact lists, chat groups, et cetera.
PGM in an IMS network resides in the application layer of the IMS network. PGM provides presence, group and data management capabilities to other IMS applications. The use of open standards and protocols in PGM allows an operator to build applications that will attract the end-users. For applications to work across different networks and operators they must be standardized. An example of such a standardized application is Push-to-Talk (PTT), which is based on the OMA Push to talk Over Cellular (PoC) standard. However, non-standardized applications can also be developed using PGM functionality. Applications can be developed by a network operator or third party supplier.
Examples of applications that can be enriched with PGM functionality are Presence Enhanced Phone Book (PEP), Multimedia Telephony, Gaming, Widgets, Instant Messaging (IM), Dating, Enterprise services, IPTV, Push-To-Talk (PTT) and Advertising. PGM is an enabler in the operator's service networks that adds value by enhancing person-to-person communication as well as opening the way for new content-to-person applications. PGM can be used in many different applications.
In person-to-person and content-to-person applications, presence can be seen as a dynamic profile of status information for persons, resources, applications or machines that is visible to others. When applied to person-to person communications, presence provides users with the current status information (presence attributes and information) of other users. Examples of such presence information include person specific availability (the user can define his/her current availability, for example “in a meeting”, “busy” or “vacation”), a tagline (a user can enter a free text, similar to the commonly used micro blogs), a mooed (a user can inform his/her friends about current mood, for example “angry”, “stressed” or “happy”), a location (a user states where he/she is currently located, for example “at home”, “at the office”). Service specific presence information may include Application Specific Availability (e.g. if a presentity is provisioned with a Telephony Service, is within coverage, has an appropriate handset, et cetera, the user is available for a telephone call), Service Description (e.g. a client can state what service capabilities it supports, for example Video Call, Instant Messaging, Chess Game etc.), or Session Participation (e.g. a client can indicate whether a user is currently involved in a session of some kind, for example a telephone call). Device specific presence information may include network availability or location, and may be updated a user or by resources such as the mobile network or other server based applications.
A presence service governs the access rules to the presence information so that only authorized entities are allowed to see or update the presence information. It handles the distribution of presence information to the interested entities.
Group and Data Management (G&DM) is the capability to manage network-based user-specific service-related information for different types of services. It can be seen as the self-provisioning aspect of an IMS terminal based application. Each end-user manages and owns this type of data, which is required by most applications. These data types are, for example, access lists related to presence information, groups used to set-up group calls and presence lists that are used for subscriptions to presence information for lists of users.
Group and data information is stored in a group and data management function where it can be accessed and manipulated (created, changed or deleted) by authorized users.
Message Waiting Indication (MWI) provides the possibility to subscribe and receive updates about pending messages in the network (e.g. unread emails or voice messages that haven't yet been played). The information is normally provided to PGM by so called Presence Network Agents (PNA), which publish the current state on-behalf of the user.
PGM can be used to enhance content-to-person applications by making up-to-date information available in the user terminal from almost any source or application. The content will be available in the terminal in the form of, for example, icons with attached messages. Examples include widgets, advertising and surveillance.
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is an open-standard communications protocol for message-oriented middleware based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), and is used in IM, VoIP and file transfer signalling. XMPP uses an open systems approach of development and application, by which anyone may implement an XMPP service and interoperate with other organizations' implementations.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) formed an XMPP Working Group in 2002 to formalize the core protocols as an IETF instant messaging and presence technology. RFC 3920, RFC 3921, RFC 3922, RFC 3923 were approved by the Internet Engineering Steering Group as Proposed Standards in 2004. RFC 3920 and RFC 3921 have been superseded by RFC 6120 and RFC 6121 respectively, and RFC 6122 specifies the XMPP address format.
Google Docs is a suite of products that lets you create different kinds of online documents, work on them in real time with other people, and store your documents and your other files online. With an Internet connection, documents and files can be accessed from any computer. This guide gives a quick overview of Google Docs: http://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?h1=en&answer=49008
Currently available conferencing service systems allow sharing of presentations, documents, desktops, etc. between participants in the conference. Currently, there are solutions to share files being modified; they must be stored in a common storage repository, but it is not possible to share file editing stored locally to each user in the conference.